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Herbert Bruderer ( bruderer@retired.ethz.ch; herbert.
bruderer@bluewin.ch) is a retired lecturer in didactics of
computer science at E TH Zürich; more recently, he has
been an historian of technology and was co-organizer of
the International Turing Conference at E TH Zürich in 2012.

Copyright held by the author.

Publication rights licensed to ACM. $15.00

Conclusion

The leading scientific journal worldwide
in the post-war period was
Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation,
first published by the American Mathematical Society in 1943. From 1954 to
1957, the Digital Computer Newsletter
was published by the Office of Naval Research within the Navy Department in
Washington, D.C., and as a supplement
to the Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. Both covered computer developments outside the U.S. and
the U.K. Mathematical Tables and Other
Aids to Computation included many reviews of non-English works in computing research. Unfortunately, many current U.S. and British books and journals
on the history of computing do not adequately acknowledge the contributions
of non-English-speaking countries.

For example, there were two co-dis-coverers of logarithms—Jost Bürgi of
Switzerland and John Napier of Scotland. Bürgi developed the logarithms
first, and Napier published his results
first. 35 The invention of the pantograph
is generally attributed to Christoph
Scheiner of Germany (1603), but Heron
of Alexandria (first century) should be
credited for (a different type of) this
drawing instrument. 3, 17, 23

Electronic devices quickly replaced
mechanical machines and instruments in the 1970s. Inventions from
continental Europe, including sectors,
proportional compasses, planimeters,
and pantographs disappeared worldwide. Gone today, however, are the
world’s former leading makers of mechanical integrators, including Amsler
(Schaffhausen, Switzerland), Coradi
(Zürich, Switzerland), and Ott (
Kempten, Germany). Forgotten are the mechanical and electronic analog computers produced in Germany (such as
Telefunken) and Switzerland (Amsler,
Contraves, and Güttinger). Including
these significant achievements in non-English-speaking countries enriches
the history of computing for all.

Acknowledgment

I am very grateful to Thomas J. Misa of
the Charles Babbage Institute at the
University of Minnesota for copy editing
this article and to Thierry Amstutz and
Christian Hörack of the Musée d’art et
d’histoire, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, for
the Jaquet-Droz automata.

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